Headlines

Jay Cost

Permanent gridlock?

Why does the public seem so ill-prepared to answer basic questions about the size and scope of government? The answer might simply be: They never really had to before now. For generations, conservatives have warned about a government that was too intrusive and a danger to private initiative; liberals have been bemoaning a government that has not done enough to secure social justice. Yet the public has never had to make a hard choice because of economic growth. In the latter half of the 20th century, growth in real gross domestic product averaged 3.6 percent per year. This enabled us to have our cake and eat it, too: The government could grow every year, and do more to ensure equity between citizens, without intruding on the private sector via higher tax rates. Everybody could win, in some sense.

Since 2000, growth has been roughly half that, clocking in at 1.8 percent per year, which is about where most experts believe 2012 will end up. This stagnation has put unprecedented pressure on Washington. The “have your cake and eat it, too” combination of big spending and low taxes has generated an annual budget deficit that now tops 10 percent of gross domestic product, unprecedented in peacetime and unsustainable over the long haul.

This is a reality that appears not to have sunk in on the public. Polling data indicate that the people simply do not understand the parlous state of public finances​—​hence the refusal to brook tax hikes to deal with the deficit, or spending cuts in entitlements, the biggest drivers of the nation’s overdrawn account. Little wonder that, after two years of gridlock between two sides that cannot find common ground, the public obstinately refused to break the tie in 2012.

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Trackbacks/Pings

Comments

It isn’t the liberals who have us on our current course, it’s the American public.

When asked to chose between lower taxes and more government benefits, the American voter has answered “yes.”

This is why all the canny observers in America’s youth predicted the nation would degenerate into a democracy and then fall apart. Distressingly, those observers were rather smart in every other respect while assembling the Constitution, as evidenced by its long success.

As Scalia reminded us, gridlock is a feature not a bug. We have divided government to stop the passage of laws that are not agreeable. The legislative branch does not exist to pass laws. It exists to prevent the passage of laws. Ergo, if legislation is not agreeable to a majority of the representatives, that legislation has no business being enacted. That means that Washington is working as intended. The system works.

However, to anyone who rues the fact that Washington does not have even more influence over the lives and conduct of the people and its businesses, such a system is described as “gridlock”. To such progressives, that is a bug, not a feature.

Remember, that Obamacare was passed because gridlock, that terrible hindrance to social progress, was temporarily overcome.

True, but Cost isn’t talking about the legislative gridlock, he’s talking about the one in voter’s brains. The same respondents are giving wildly contradictory answers to related questions, indicating a critical mass of them either don’t know or don’t care that a trillion-and-a-half is unsustainable and “foreign aid” is not a significant line item.

Also, the legislative gridlock was fine when we weren’t on autopilot to go over the cliff. The fact that Obama can’t pass another piece of social engineering is small comfort to us now. Personally, I wish he could, just to make the blow-up quicker and more unambiguously the result of socialism.